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The CancerWeb Report, What's New In Cancer
Breast Cancer: December 1995
Last modified on:
Tuesday, April 20, 1999 13:03:10
Copyright © 1994-2008, Information Ventures, Inc.
Breast Cancer Prevention Trial - It is three years since the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial, co-
sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), got off the ground.
Conceived as a $68 million study of whether tamoxifen would
reduce the incidence of breast cancer, it was also linked with
other aspects of women's health, particularly cardiovascular
disease whose incidence rises dramatically in post-menopausal
women. But because of the slow accession of women over age 55
and minorities, groups with the highest cardiovascular risk,
NHLBI is withdrawing, leaving NCI to support most of the rest of
the trial. To confound matters, the State of California is about
to declare tamoxifen a carcinogen because of the increased risk
for endometrial cancer; Proposition 65 mandates this. This will
likely further reduce patient accession (11,500 versus
anticipated 16,000 with less than 5,000 over 55 and only 3%
minorities). The NCI intends to continue to monitor the
cardiovascular state of women in the trial, which is good, since
yet another recent study, this one from Helsinki, Finland,
reported in the December issue of the Journal of Clinical
Oncology, described a 16% reduction in harmful LDL cholesterol
without changes in the beneficial HDL after 12 months on
tamoxifen. See also the November 10, 1995 issue of Science.
Adjuvant Radiotherapy and p53 - A report from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, (T. Jansson) in
the November, 1995 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology detailed
the surprising finding that in node negative patients, adjuvant
radiotherapy significantly improved overall and relapse-free
survival in those who had mutated forms of the p53 gene, whereas
radiotherapy was of no additional benefit in those who had the
normal "wild type" p53. However, the presence of altered p53
gives a worse prognosis overall, but only this group showed any
benefit from radiation.
Postmastectomy Radiotherapy - Postmastectomy radiotherapy definitely decreases the rate of
distant metastases according to an article from European
collaborators at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif,
France, and the Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, appearing in the
December, 1995 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The
radiation treatment prevents local recurrences, which in turn
avoids the secondary formation of metastases from these recurrent
sites.
Docetaxel - Docetaxel, the newly FDA-approved paclitaxel relative, received
much attention - an editorial and two articles in the December, 1995
issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Docetaxel had the
highest activity so far recorded for chemotherapy agents in
advanced drug-resistant breast cancer, according to studies from
the University of Texas at San Antonio, Thomas Jefferson
University, Philadelphia, and the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in
Houston.
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